The 1960 Moment

A common theme at the convention is already shaping up to be the 1960 moment of today.  This refers to the breakthrough of television in American politics during the Nixon/Kennedy debate, where Kennedy cleaned Nixon’s clock because he was so telegenic.

Or maybe that is not the whole story, argues Michael Cornfield, who says that Nixon made the mistake of acknowledging his own deficiencies during the debate.

Cornfield claims that the 1960 movement of this era was last year during George Allen’s “Macaca” slip-up, which led candidates to realize there every public moment is now being recorded, and can potentially be used against them in a forum where many people can easily see it.

On the other hand, Chuck DeFeo, a blogger for the conservative web site Townhall.com, and a major player in George W. Bush’s online campaign, says that the 1960 moment has not yet come, and politicians are still trying to figure out how best to utilize the internet for their campaigns. 

Micah Sifry, of the Personal Democracy Forum (personaldemocracy.com) argues that politicians in America are not properly utilizing the internet, compared to Great Britain, where conservative party leader David Cameron has a daily video where he addresses comments left on his blogs by the public.

I wonder if back in 1960 before the debate people sat around talking about how nobody had figured out how to make television work for candidates the way that radio worked for FDR with his Fireside Chats. 

I think the 1960’s moment happened for the Democrats with the Howard Dean campaign in 2004. That was “Ground Zero” for the Internet and politics combining. There are many Deaniacs who have been involved with ground breaking Internet/political activities since. How do you think the Democrats won in 2006? It wasn’t luck.

The 1960’s moment for the Republicans was when Bush/Cheney invaded Iraq. The purpose was to get themselves re-elected, and granted they succeeded in that, but they’ve destroyed their party for years to come. They used the Mainstream Media to push for that war and glorify the Bush/Cheney agenda and both entities have lost. More and more people now go to the Internet for unbiased or better news coverage.

As for the 2008 elections, candidates from both sides are building on what the Dean campaign started or transformed in using the Internet to outreach to supporters and voters.